Following the release of the report Glyphosate: Unsafe On Any Plate on November 14, which revealed alarming levels of the weedkiller glyphosate in popular American foods, Monsanto supporters went in to full attack mode to protect their number one product, however this time they fell on their own swords within a matter of days.

Last year, 17 leading global cancer experts from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) sparked a firestorm when they classified glyphosate as a class 2A “probable human carcinogen”.

On the heels of this growing controversy surrounding the safety of glyphosate, the testing report published by Food Democracy Now! and The Detox Project revealed alarming levels (5 to 1125 ppb) of glyphosate in General Mills’ Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, Raisin Bran and Frosted Flakes and PepsiCo’s Doritos Cool Ranch, Ritz Crackers and Stacy’s Simply Naked Pita Chips, as well as many more famous products, at levels that present significant risks according to the latest independent peer-reviewed science on glyphosate.

Fail #1: Criticism of testing methods

What happened following the publishing of ‘Glyphosate: Unsafe On Any Plate’ can only be described as a massive fail by some of Monsanto’s main supporters including Dr. Kevin Folta (University of Florida) and Dr. Michelle McGuire (Washington State University).

Folta and McGuire started the attack on the report on November 14 on Twitter, with criticism of the testing methods used, even before they understood what these were.

However, after holding an e-mail conversation with the FDA-registered Anresco Laboratories, Folta was forced to withdraw his criticism, which he had already fed to a selection of journalists across the U.S..

Folta stated on November 24; “I was contacted by the laboratory that did the analysis for them and I am comfortable that they did the detection 100% correctly. No question.”

Anresco Laboratories expert statement on their new era of glyphosate testing can be found here.

After their first line of attack failed massively, Monsanto’s supporters moved on to other possible ways to attack the report.

Firstly, they tried the dose makes the poison argument that is only used by desperate industry-funded scientists still hanging on to the understanding of science from the 1970s and 1980s. Not surprisingly, Dr. Folta is one of those industry scientists who still ‘believe’ that low doses of chemicals are not dangerous despite mainstream scientific evidence now showing that many chemicals can be endocrine disruptors (hormone hackers) at very low levels (e.g. 0.1 to 3000 ppb).

Chemical industry funded science still suggests that the higher the dose of a chemical the more dangerous it is, however modern independent science has discovered that many toxic chemicals have as much or more of an influence on our health at low doses– these chemicals are known as hormone hackers (endocrine disruptors).

A study from March 2015 stated that the health costs to the European Union of hormone hacking chemicals is over $ 150 Billion per year! The study stated that lower IQ, adult obesity and 5% or more of autism cases are all linked to exposure to endocrine disruptors.

Glyphosate is likely to be one of these hormone hacking chemicals according to independent science. Find more information on this here.

Fail #3: Peer Review needed for food testing results?

Dr. Folta and colleagues have now taken to stating that they cannot trust the results because they are not peer-reviewed, even though they are all clearly aware of the difference between University studies and commercial laboratory reports.

This is a ridiculous line of attack as millions of food samples in the U.S. are tested and reported by FDA-registered laboratories, such as Anresco Laboratories, every single year with no peer-review.

The Glyphosate: Unsafe On Any Plate report is not a University-based scientific study, which would require peer-review, it is a report of accurate results of glyphosate levels in popular American foods from a commercial laboratory (Anresco Laboratories) with over 70 years of experience in protecting public health through using accurate testing methods.